The world is getting very much more competitive.

It's not the bad ideas that do you in, but the good ones.

It's my guess that something like 5% of GDP goes to money management and itsattendant friction. I define it broadly - annuities, incentive pay, all trading, etc. Nobody else has used figures that high, but that's my guess. Worst of all, the people doing this are among the best and the brightest. Hundreds and thousands of engineers, etc. are going into hedge funds and investment banking. That is not an intelligent allocation of the brainpower of the civilization.

Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.

Don't confuse correlation and causation. Almost all great records eventually dwindle.

A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.

Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets - and can be lost in a heartbeat.